The Lecturer first emphasised the importance of the study of Islam in view of the large number of Muhammadans in the British Empire, amounting (at the lowest estimate) to 90½ millions, and implying a problem of great importance to the statesman, the politician, the educationalist, and to all persons concerned with the larger problems of the globe. Whatever the total Muhammadan population of the world may be, and, in the absence of trustworthy religious statistics, or even of any form of census whatsoever in many of the countries concerned, it is impossible to say exactly what it amounts to,—(on the most careful reckoning, it is probably something between 200 and 230 millions)—the 90½ millions of Muhammadan British subjects form a large proportion of the whole, and have an importance beyond what mere numbers imply, because of the superior culture of large sections among them. He showed by illustrations how religious considerations enter more largely into the daily life of Muhammadan people than in Christian society; the religion of Islam claims to speak with authority in the domain of law, politics, and social organisation, as much as in the sphere of theology and ethics; the wisest and most carefully considered plans of statesmen and reformers run a risk of being wrecked upon the rock of fanaticism. In the world of Islam the foundations of society have been set in religion, in a manner that is hard to understand for the average European Christian who has entered on the inheritance of ancient Greece and Rome, and the institutions of the barbarian invaders who swept the Roman Empire away.
Without Why: Useless Plants in Daoism and Christianity
